SEO in 2018: Know the Trends and Stay Ahead of the Curve

2018 is rapidly approaching and, from what I can tell, things are about to change BIG TIME on the SEO front.

Today, I’m here to walk you through what’s making waves in the SEO world in 2018 as well as give you practical tips and techniques you can implement right away to make sure you stay ahead of the competition!

Buckle in because I’m about to take you on a fascinating tour of what to expect for SEO in 2018.

How to think about Google’s RankBrain

Google’s RankBrain was first introduced in 2015.

Around that time, RankBrain handled about 15% of the 3.5 billion search queries Google receives daily.

Today, RankBrain is involved in every search query and has been revealed as the third-most important ranking factor in Google’s vaunted ranking algorithm, next to links and content (more on that later).

It is also designed to match never-before-seen search queries to their best answers by predicting the best possible match.

How does RankBrain work?

In short: RankBrain interprets either positive or negative user signals based on how people interact with its search results. It uses those user signals to predict with better accuracy the search result that is most likely to provide the best search experience to its users.

Here’s a demonstration of how it works:

Suppose you do a search for ‘best electric cars’:

The first result looks particularly enticing so you click on that one.

When you get there, however, you are bombarded with annoying pop-ups and embedded advertiser videos that start playing somewhere outside of the viewport. You quickly find yourself feeling overwhelmed and hit the ‘back’ button on your browser.

RankBrain is going to look at that interaction, one in which the first result was clicked on, the searcher stayed on the page for about 10 seconds, then hit the back button. It will likely draw the conclusion that that search result wasn’t a good pick for the search query ‘best electric cars’ and might not keep it at the #1 spot as readily anymore.

In contrast, suppose I click on the third result and love what I find: instead of bouncing after 10 seconds, I end up reading all 1,500 hundred words on the page.

In that case, RankBrain will also take note and will likely give the #3 result a boost in the rankings.

How to Optimize for RankBrain

RankBrain learns from how people interact with search results, mainly through two user interaction signals:

The percentage of people who click on a search result (Click-Through Rate or CTR)

As you can see, there is less and less web real-estate available for organic search results.

This is especially true for Local SEO as SERP features extend to promote local businesses.

Google and other search engines are doing a great job at answering our queries quickly but, in the process, are crowding out organic search results with ads, answer boxes, multimedia carousels, and other SERP features.

In fact, a recent study reports that organic click-through is down 37% from two years ago – that’s a lot!

RankBrain and Dwell Time

Dwell Time, simply put, is the amount of time someone spends on your page between clicking on your result in the SERPs and clicking the back button.

A longer Dwell Time signals to search engines that people are engaging with your content longer and this correlates to higher rankings. This was covered in more depth in an article by Search Engine Land.

From now on, your website will have to be a lot more sensitive to how a search engine experiences it, particularly on mobile.

For example, it’s not uncommon that, on the mobile version of a website, certain content is hidden with CSS or JavaScript.

This is what you might see if content is hidden or unable to be loaded on your mobile site.

Another scenario might be a stripped-down mobile website, in the name of saving costly download bandwidth, that loads fewer page assets such as large images or videos.

In any case, it’s important that there is no loss of content between the mobile site and the desktop one. Otherwise, some of your content might not be seen by the search engines and you might experience a slip in your search rankings for those particular pages and overall.

To do that, head over to Google’s PageSpeed Insights and plug your web address into the text field. When you do, you’ll get a rating as well as a list of things you can do to optimize page performance:

YouTube has over a billion users, almost one-third of total internet users (source)

It’s clear that video is a HUGE component of the internet.

That being said, if you’re not already making video content, you could be missing out on some huge benefits.

Think about this:

YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world with more traffic than Yahoo!, Bing, AOL, and Ask combined (source). If you’re not creating video content then you’re essentially missing out on all that traffic!

If you don’t have link-worthy content, you won’t stand a chance of cracking the front page. And if you’re not on the first page of Google, you’re not going to appear for Voice search and other SERP features.

How to Create Better Content

Studies show that the average content length of the top 10 results is over 2,000 words

This kind of makes sense when you think about it:

Longer-form content will tend to keep people on your page for longer, thus increasing dwell time.

Additionally, longer content tends to be more link-worthy: if you can link to one, in-depth page instead of a bunch of pages that cover only a portion of a topic, why wouldn’t you?

Acquire More Links

In addition to longer content, the amount of links that point to your content is going to make a huge difference in how well you rank organically.

Consider this:

In a study by Backlinko, domains with the most links (and thereby the most domain authority) tend to outrank domains with fewer links and less authority (a bit of a no-brainer, huh?).

In laymen’s terms, a website that is linked to by a lot of people is seen as more trustworthy in the eyes of search engines like Google. As such, search engines are going to be a lot more willing to point its users to these websites.

Bottom line:

Strong content and links are still the main ranking factors when it comes to winning at SEO.

Focus on creating longer content and you’ll have a better shot at earning links naturally.

Alternatively, take a proactive approach to link-building and try to acquire links through outreach and social media networks.

However you choose to do it, links are your best friend to higher rankings, and links won’t come to you if your content stinks!

Conclusion

We now have a better idea of what’s coming down the pike for SEO in 2018.

From artificial intelligence generating our search results to Voice search and more video, to stay up to date with what’s happening online we’ll need to shift our SEO strategy to work with these trends.

Remember to:

Become more aware of the keywords you choose to target as there’s going to be less space on Page One for organic search results.

Focus on creating strong content and improving the user experience in order to generate positive user signals and, hopefully, more links to your content.

Optimize your mobile site, making sure it’s quick and easy to use.

Brace yourself for a new frontier of search and SEO!

Which SEO trend is the one you’re going to optimize most for? Leave a comment below!